Jocelyn Terell Allen - Early Days, Early Dancers

EARLY DAYS,
EARLY DANCERS

EARLY DAYS,
EARLY DANCERS

EARLY YEARS OF THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA

JOCELYN TERELL ALLEN

Copyright 2020 Jocelyn Terell Allen

Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

Published in Canada by

Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

210 Founders College, York University

4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3

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We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

Printed and Bound in Canada.

Cover photograph: Jocelyn Terell with Hans Meister and Patrick Hurde, publicity shot for One in Five . Courtesy of the National Ballet Archives.

Cover design: Val Fullard

eBook: tikaebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Early days, early dancers : early years of the National Ballet of Canada / Jocelyn Terell Allen.

Names: Allen, Jocelyn Terell, 1939 author.

Description: Series statement: Inanna F.A.R. art series | Includes

bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200210653 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200210688 | ISBN 9781771337731 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337748 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337755 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337762 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: National Ballet of CanadaHistory. | LCSH: Ballet companiesCanadaHistory. | LCSH: BalletCanadaHistory.

Classification: LCC GV1786.N38 A45 2020 | DDC 792.80971dc23

This book is dedicated to Peter,
whose silence was always supportive.

Table of Contents

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom, of the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats, Among School Children

Foreword

Those of us who have enjoyed long and satisfying careers through the most recent decades at the National Ballet of Canada owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the pioneers who came before us. It is wonderful to read of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of those early years, and to imagine how different it must have been when the Company was first founded in the fifties.

The first-person accounts you are about to read conjure the sights, the smells, and the sweat that contributed to the National Ballets formative years. The tributes written to those who have left us exemplify the kindness and courage that formed the foundations of the National Ballet.

A huge thank you to all who contributed to bring this important part of our history to life, and a special thank you to Jocelyn Terell Allen for the Herculean effort she undertook to compile these stories in Early Days, Early Dancers.

To those whose shoulders we all stand uponmany, many thanks.

Karen Kain, C.C, LL.D., D.Litt., O.Ont.,

Artistic Director, National Ballet of Canada, September 2019

Introduction

T WO STRONG WOMEN WERE INSTRUMENTAL in making the National Ballet of Canada what it is today. Under the leadership of Celia Franca, a woman of great drive and ambition, a humble ballet company was born in 1951, giving its first performance at the Eaton Auditorium on November 12th of that year. Throughout those early years, next to Celia Franca stood Betty Oliphant, a driving, exacting teacher who moulded many of the Companys early dancers, stoking their passion for ballet as children, and later as ballet mistress and head of the National Ballet School. Now, the National Ballet Company thrives under the artistic directorship of Karen Kain, herself a graduate of the National Ballet School in 1969.

In order to celebrate the people who together laid the foundation of the National Ballet of Canada, this book looks back to the 1950s. The focus of the book is on the dancers. As well, the book gives enormous credit to those who supported these early dancers: the directors, teachers, trainers, and choreographers. The body of the book comes from a questionnaire which was compiled and sent to twenty-four women and men who made up this original company, asking them to draw on their memories of those early years, using the following categories:

What first inspired you to dance?

What was your dance training prior to the National Ballet?

Describe some of your performances and experiences of touring.

What were your favourite and not-so-favourite ballets in the Companys repertoire?

What were some of the most memorable and most terrifying moments of your life in the Company?

Which dancers in the Company did you most admire?

Describe your transition out of dance.

One of the Companys early dancers, Myrna Aaron, describes Toronto in the fifties as rather dreary and provincialnot at all like the metropolis it is today. Nevertheless, along with other areas of growth in the performing arts in Canada, this provincial city was the birthplace of the National Ballet of Canada. This book tells the stories of the people, performances, talent, hard work, dedication, determination, and support that went into this development in the early years of the 1950s. These stories are told in the voices of the dancers who were a central part of these early years. They show firsthand how a group of dancers found a footing, overcoming almost insurmountable obstacles, to create what is now the world-class National Ballet of Canada. Throughout the book, the reader will come to understand the interlocking and interdependent roles of directors, teachers, choreographers, and most of all, the dancers. And the reader will come to appreciate all of the support and generosity provided for these dancers by families, schoolteachers, dance instructors, and each other.

By the summer of 1951, Celia Franca had gathered a group of dancers from across Canada. According to Franca, they were half-trained and trained in different styles, but out of that summer school [in 1951] we got this little group of kids together to start the National Ballet Companyon nothing! (Tennant, Celia Franca ). The broader stories of the dancers unfold throughout this book: those who left school at age fourteen because they were determined to dance; those who appeared to already have the makings of prima ballerinas; those whose early years were marred by tragedies of the Second World War; and those whose families and teachers went to great lengths to show faith in their dreams.

How did this all begin? Boris Volkoff had a ballet studio in downtown Toronto at 777 Yonge Street, near the intersection at Bloor Street, known as the Boris Volkoff Ballet. A plaque can still be found near that address today. His goal was to bring ballet to the masses and he presented dance and other performance acts from various cultural backgrounds to an eager Toronto audience. In 1934, he attracted a crowd of 5,500 to the Toronto Varsity Stadium to see one of his bric-a-brac entertainments (Morrison). At this time, Volkoff was asked by Mr. P.J. Mulqueen, head of the Sports Committee for Canada, to put together a group of dancers to compete at an international dance competition held in Germany, concurrent with the Berlin Olympics in 1936, where ultimately Volkoffs dancers performed with great success.